Translator: Mirjana Čutura Reviewer: Tijana Mihajlović
Many of you have probably heard the story of the Princess and the Frog.
A prince misbehaved and offended a witch,
so the witch decided to put a spell on him.
She turned him into a frog.
To break the spell,
the prince had to find a princess who would kiss him
while he was a frog.
He hopped around, and one day, a princess appeared.
He talked with her and persuaded her he was actually a prince
and that a princess had to kiss him.
So the princess kissed him, and they lived happily ever after.
What's wrong with that story in real life?
How many princesses are there in reality,
and how many times does a princess decide to kiss a frog?
In sports, we all start out as frogs.
Some start out at the age of 6, some at 9, some at 12.
Then you try hard, work hard, get into a minor league team.
Then you try even more,
and with a bit of luck, you get into a youth team,
then a junior team,
and then you work and train and maybe get into a club team.
And then again, if you're good, if you work hard,
you get into a national team.
And then, if you're good and work hard, you sign for a club abroad,
and you start making a living by playing sports professionally.
If you're once again good and work hard, your national team may be successful
if there's a group of people similar to you.
You may make it to a big competition,
you may make it to the Olympic Games,
you may eventually win a gold medal at the Olympics.
I had the honor of playing at the Olympics four times
and even winning a gold medal once.
However, a career in sports can look completely different.
In many cases, it looks something like this:
you start training, you try hard,
get into a minor league team, then a youth team, then a junior team,
and then you get injured.
And you stop training.
On the other hand, at around 35,
since your body cannot take the pressure, unless you play golf or chess,
you stop training, and you can no longer do sports.
Simply put, prior to this, it looked something like this:
TV, interviews, people followed you, you did what you loved,
and then one day, you wake up, and all that is gone.
Then you think,
"Okay, so, I'll have plenty of time to do things I've always wanted to do,
but never had the time."
Then you visit your friends and do all the things you couldn't before,
and after two months or so, your body simply yearns sports.
Then you join a gym, start watching matches,
maybe get called to coach a junior team.
However, that isn't as interesting as when you played and had great success.
And then you start thinking, "Okay, what am I going to do now?"
Many athletes get lost thinking about it.
You probably heard about a basketball player Lamar Odom,
who was found barely alive a few months ago.
They saved him,
but his kidneys are no longer functional.
Or about Paul Gascoigne, a well-known soccer player,
who's fighting an alcohol addiction, who's on a verge of death on daily basis.
Why do they get lost, so to say?
Because they think they can't do anything else.
Because their whole life until then was sports:
breakfast, training, lunch, napping, training, dinner, sleeping.
And they simply can't break out of that world.
When they find themselves in an ordinary life,
they don't know what to do next.
You may have heard about Momčilo Tapavica, the first Serbian Olympian from this area.
The first Olympics was in 1896, and Momčilo competed in three disciplines.
He came in third in tennis.
He competed in wrestling and weight-lifting,
and came in fifth and sixth respectively.
However, after that, Momčilo Tapavica became an architect.
Matica Srpska, a building in Novi Sad that you've probably heard of,
was designed by Momčilo.
He also designed a bank in Cetinje, the National Bank of Montenegro,
and a lot of buildings on the coast of Croatia.
At first, he was good at sports, and later he became a superb architect.
Or for example, Rebecca Romero,
who took part in a rowing competition in Athens in 2004
and won a silver medal,
later competed in cycling in 2008 and became an Olympic champion.
Throughout history, you all heard about Leonardo da Vinci,
who had different talents and was a painter, sculptor, and inventor.
He's considered one of the most intelligent people
to have lived on the planet.
However, there are many people who are good at many things.
Anthony Hopkins, who was a musician before becoming an actor
and whose waltz was recently performed in Vienna - and it is a fantastic waltz -
was embarrassed to have his music performed
at the time he composed it.
I strongly believe that all people are talented for a number of things,
not only one.
If you ask me, a great thing in life is when you discover your talent
and achieve your full potential.
But there's a problem.
Not everyone is willing to put in the necessary work, time, and effort
in order to develop that talent.
At a certain point after ending my career, I decided to coach junior athletes.
And when I asked those kids,
"What would you like to be when you grow up?"
they all said they wanted to become professional athletes.
However, I didn't notice any of them investing enough time, work, and effort
to be able to actually achieve that.
Some research show that if you want to be great at anything,
you need to put in around eight years of focused work,
you need to improve on annual basis.
And when you do something, you really need to be fully dedicated.
Otherwise, achieving success is unlikely.
With a lot of luck, someone may reach a certain level,
but that doesn't actually last.
I think that today's generations and education in general
are designed in such a way to prepare you for an academic career
or to provide you with certain skills needed to work in a company.
A long time ago, a literate person was an educated person.
Then, if you finished an elementary school,
you were an educated person.
Today, even when you graduate from university,
your education doesn't end there.
You continue your education.
Your whole life, you improve yourself in one way or another.
Today, almost all the jobs in the job market
are related to some projects and certain timelines,
which not only require sufficient academic skills
but also many other things.
Improving yourself and your skills
in other fields is needed.
A turning point in my life
happened when I sustained an arm injury in 2004.
Actually, a blood clot formed in my right arm,
and my arm turned pale and cold.
When I went to hospital, the doctors determined
that two arteries supplying blood to the arm were clogged
and that I had to stay in hospital for treatment.
That night, I was told that they might have to amputate my arm
because if the blood doesn't flow, gangrene occurs.
I was in a room with six other people at a cardiovascular department in Perugia,
and that night, in my head, my career ended.
That was the first time I really asked myself,
"What am I going to do if this happens?"
and this was very likely.
After this, luckily, I worked a lot, saw many doctors, did therapy,
and one artery unclogged.
The other one remained clogged forever.
However, the arm was functional.
That same year, 2004, we went to the Olympics
and finished fifth through eighth.
But since then, I started thinking about what I could do.
As a kid, I dreamed about becoming an astrophysicist and working for NASA,
and I'm sure that if I'd taken that route, I would've been a good astrophysicist.
I am also sure that I would've been a good marine biologist
because that interested me after watching the Big Blue.
At that time, I read something in a book
that moved me and opened my eyes,
and that was: if you read two best books from any field,
you'll know 90% more about that field than all the people on the planet.
If you read three books, you'll know 98% more than all the people.
Today, we have the Internet.
You can find many things on the Internet, both good and not so good,
but it's enough to type in the search bar whatever interests you,
and you get the results
so that you can learn a lot about various topics.
Today, knowledge and education are much more available.
Consider what it was like 200 years ago
when books were a rarity
and when people who could read and write were a rarity as well.
Today, everything is at your fingertips.
A few months ago,
there was a window draft in an apartment I'm renting out.
Since I didn't want to hire a contractor, I decided to fix it myself.
I didn't know how to do it.
I typed in the search bar, "How to fix a window draft?"
and I watched three videos that day.
I saw how to work with silicone,
I saw how to apply that tape to avoid mess,
how to correctly apply the soapy water,
and I went to the apartment, where I was greeted by my tenant.
I pulled out all my tools, arranged them,
masked off the surface, and fixed the window,
and he looked at me and said, "Do you do this professionally?"
"Well, yes. I've done it many times."
But that morning, I heard about it for the first time
and watched three videos.
So my message to you is to use the Internet,
use anything you can
because in life and career, you never know what you might need.
At first, I was into science, and I thought my life would go one way.
Today, I practice psychology - after my career, I became a psychologist -
and I help young athletes reach their dreams.
I'm a mental sport coach.
The greatest happiness
doesn't come from money or material goods.
If you ask me,
the greatest happiness comes from helping someone achieve their goals.
I see it as food for the soul,
and once you discover it, I think you'll enjoy it too.
It's important to know that our brain actually creates a mind trap.
You think that things will remain the way they are now -
in my case, I'll always be 38,
or in your case, 18 or maybe 40,
and the circumstances will remain the same.
But the circumstances change every day, and you don't know what's ahead.
That's why it's good to learn and be prepared for anything
because we never know what's ahead.
Well, let me finish our story about the frog
and what that may look like in reality.
Our frog heard that an enchantress lived at the top of a mountain
and that she was the only one who could help him.
However, when the frog reached the foot of the mountain, it looked huge.
The frog started to climb up,
but after only five meters, he fell crushing down.
Then he started climbing differently.
He used his front legs more.
The rain started, so he slipped all the way down again.
The frog kept trying, and he reached the enchantress after some time.
On the top of the mountain stood the enchantress' house
and a well with a note that read,
"Drink from this well, and your problems will be fixed."
The frog jumped in and turned into a prince.
After climbing out of the well, the prince started going down the mountain.
The enchantress opened the door, looked at him, and said,
"Just so you know, you may turn into a frog again."
Thank you very much.
(Applause)